Monday, March 23, 2015

The Jack of Souls by Stephen Merlino #YA #fantasy

An outcast rogue named Harric must break a curse laid on
his fate or die by his nineteenth birthday.

As his dead-day approaches, nightmares from the spirit
world stalk him and tear at his sanity; sorcery eats at his soul.

To survive, he’ll need more than his usual tricks. He’ll
need help—and a lot of it—but on the kingdom’s lawless frontier, his only
allies are other outcasts. One of these outcasts is Caris, a mysterious,
horse-whispering runaway, intent upon becoming the Queen’s first female knight.
The other is Sir Willard—ex-immortal, ex-champion, now addicted to pain-killing
herbs and banished from the court.

With their help, Harric might keep his curse at bay. But
for how long?

And both companions bring perils and secrets of their own:
Caris bears the scars of a troubled past that still hunts her; Willard is at
war with the Old Ones, an order of insane immortal knights who once enslaved
the kingdom. The Old Ones have returned to murder Willard and seize the throne
from his queen. Willard is both on the run from them, and on one final,
desperate quest to save her.

For More Information

Someone
shouted the words in Harric’s ear over the din of the crowded barroom. He
turned from the group of knights and house-girls he stood with, and found the
brewer, Mags, leaning across the bar behind him. The old man fixed him with a
look, drunk and earnest, and indicated the winch-clock on the bar. Five minutes
to midnight. Five minutes left of
Harric’s nineteenth year, and his last full day of life. “You’d best write it
quick,” Mags said, “or Rudy’ll snatch up your things before your corpse is
cold.”

Harric’s
throat tightened. He clenched his jaw against a rising rage—rage at the
unfairness of his fate, at the madness that spawned it, and—

He shook it
off. He would not end like the
others, howling or blubbering for mercy.

He tipped his
cup back and took a deep drink from his wine. “The night is still young.”

“Don’t make
light of it, son. This is the day.”

“You think I
don’t remember?”

“Just trying
to help.”

“You’re
trying to clear me out before my death spoils the party.”

The old man
scratched his stubbled chin. “Well, it would cramp the mood considerable…”

Harric
managed a wry smile. He pointed to the winch-clock that towered above him, a
column of woodwork on the bar, like a coffin on end. “When the twelfth chime
sounds at midnight, my precious doom
has till sunset tomorrow to find me. Plenty of time to write a will.”

The brewer
nodded, and grimaced as if struggling with emotion. He drew Harric close, old
eyes glistening with unshed tears. “You know there isn’t a one of us here who wouldn’t
have stopped your mother if we’d known. I’d have killed her if I had to. I
swear it.”

Unable to
speak, Harric downed the last of his wine. “You’re right about one thing,” he
said, pulling away. “It’s time to leave the celebration to my guests.” Before
Mags could object, Harric stepped on a chair and onto the bar beside the
winch-clock. From the back of the clock case he drew out the crowbar he'd
hidden inside, and in two quick moves he wrenched out the mainspring to the
accompaniment of cracking wood and outraged chimes.

“Wha—?” Mags
choked. “Who’s gonna pay for that?”

“Keep your
hair on.” Harric dropped his purse of coins on the bar, and steadied himself
against the clock, forever stopped at one minute to midnight.

The clamor
drew all eyes to the bar. A few present could read clocks and understood his
joke; most simply saw him on the bar and fell silent, expecting a speech from
their host.

Harric looked
out into the smoky hall at the sea of upturned faces. In the gloom at the back
of the hall, orange embers of ragleaf pipes pulsed like fireflies, and the
place had fallen so silent he imagined he could hear the embers crackle with
each pulse. Among the expectant faces he saw mostly locals of Gallows Ferry,
familiars with whom he’d grown to manhood. Others were strangers passing
through the outpost on the way to the Free Lands. He’d invited them all, and
not a single enemy stood among them, for he’d drugged Rudy and his crew and
left them sleeping with the hogs. A double pleasure, that.

“Almost
time,” he called, with a room-filling bravado he did not feel. “And it’s going
to stay that way for the rest of the night!” He raised the mainspring in mock
triumph, to a roar of applause.

“I have no gloomy speech for you,” he assured
them. “We’ve said our farewells, and this night is for celebration. I leave you
now to finish the wine and continue as if this night would never end. For you I
bought up all the wine in Gallows Ferry, so it will be a great affront to my
memory if a drop remains at daybreak.”

Applause
shook the timbered walls. Gentlemen and free men saluted with swords or raised
cups. House-girls and maids threw flowers and other favors on the bar. In their
faces he saw affection and curiosity and pity.

For that
moment, Harric was a hero. He bowed, savoring the feeling for a single, aching
heartbeat, then flung the mainspring to the crowd and departed for his chambers
through the service door behind the bar.

Caris waited
for him in the passage, illumined by a single candle near the door. Like all
horse-touched, she was even bigger than the average man, so she filled the
narrow servant’s corridor, hair touching the ceiling and elbows brushing walls.
If Harric hadn’t expected her, he might have stepped back to give way,
mistaking her in the dim light for one of the knights rooming at the inn, who
sometimes got lost in its passages.

As the roar
of the bar washed through the open door and past Harric, Caris flinched and
clapped her hands to her ears.

He shut the
door quickly and flashed a reassuring smile. “Ready? I expect they’ll be on my
heels.”

She lowered
her hands, but kept her stare on the floor between them, rocking from foot to
foot. Even with the door closed, the bar’s clamor distressed her horse-touched
senses, so it wouldn’t have surprised him if she turned and fled
or—worse—curled in a ball with her hands to her ears. He’d seen it before, but
he could never predict when she’d collapse and when she’d stand firm.

“Nothing I
can’t handle,” she murmured.

“Good.”

Shrill voices
rose in the bar, and her eyes jumped to the door behind him.

“This here’s
private, folks,” said Mags, on the other side. “Harric’s done said his
farewells.”

“Aw, we can’t
leave him alone tonight,” said a voice Harric recognized as Ana. “You know he’s writing his will.”

“Yes, and you
aim to kiss your way into it,” said Mags, “but I ain’t letting you. So get!”

Caris’s jaw
clenched. She turned sideways and gestured for Harric to pass, pressing her
back to the side of the passage. It made little space for him to slip by, and
since she was almost two heads taller, her breasts stood level with his nose.
She blushed, for though she tried to hide her feminine parts in loose-fitting
men’s gear, there was no denying their presence.

His skin
tingled at the thought of brushing front to front, and the notion summoned the
void back to his chest and a sting to his eyes. He bit the inside of his lip
and turned sideways to sidle past. Before he took a step, she grasped his arms
below the shoulders and lifted until his feet left the ground and his head
bumped the ceiling.

“Or you could
just lift me,” he said.

Face dark
with embarrassment, she rotated him past, set him at the foot of the stairs,
and turned back to the door.

“Let me
through, Magsy,” said a male voice beyond it. “I’ll be sure you get a share.”

“Magsy?” The brewer snorted. “I said
get!”

Caris glanced
over her shoulder and frowned when she saw Harric still standing at the bottom
of the stairs. “If they get by Mags, they won’t get by me. You can thank me in
the morning.”

“You’re the
only one I haven’t bid farewell.”

“I won’t let
you. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Harric gave a
weak smile. “You still think I’m crazy. You think all this fuss about my curse
is for nothing?”

“I never said
crazy. Just mistaken. We make our own fate.”

“Ah. And all
the people I grew up with here—all the people who knew my mother and her
curses—they’re mistaken too?”

She shrugged.
“I’ve only been here two months. I can’t say I know you or your mother like
they do. But maybe that makes me see more clearly.”

Harric rubbed
his eyes. He knew he should go. He’d kept the boil of grief and rage well
bottled all night, and he mustn’t let them leak now. Of all people, Caris would
know least how to receive a torrent of emotion. But she surprised him, turning
toward him and lifting her gaze from the floor to meet his, a task surely
harder for her horse-touched sensibilities than lifting a donkey.

“No mother
would kill her child,” she said, voice low, eyes bright with tears. “Not even
my mother, the mother of a—” Her gaze faltered, then rose, defiant. “I’m proof.
No mother could hate her child like that.”

“In the two
months I’ve known you, I’ve never heard you mention your mother.”

“Don’t change
the subject. Your mother didn’t hate you.”

Harric
sighed. “Who said anything about hate?”

“You’re
saying she loved you?”

The
ache in his chest deepened. Memories of his earliest years with his mother
returned unbidden. Golden scenes of her lucid days, sitting in the sunny window
above the river as she read to him, or sang. He swallowed the tightness in his throat. “She’s mad. Her visions showed
her that the Queen will fall because of something I do, and only my death can
prevent it.”

“That’s
ridiculous.”

He
nodded. “But her curses are real. I have less than a day.”

The bar door
flew open and banged against the wall. With a triumphant squeal, a wave of
petitioners swept in, and Caris whirled to face it. Harric retreated up the
lowest steps and watched as she grabbed the leader by the arms—it was Gina, the
eldest barmaid—and spun her about to face the flood that followed. Pinioning
Gina’s arms, Caris used her as a breakwater against the rush.

Second in
line was Donnal Bigs, who caught Harric’s eye and waved a debt slip from the
card tables. “There you are, Harric! Since you got no use for your coin
anymore, be a good lad and float me—”

Donal’s
eagerness turned to confusion as Caris put her shoulder to Gina’s back and
drove her forward, mashing her into his chest as Ana collided behind. “Hey!” he
cried.

“Horse-brained
bitch!” Gina spat. “Brute!”

Deaf to their
outrage—or perhaps fueled by it—Caris propelled them backwards, picking up
speed until she ejected them into the bar, where they fell in a welter of boots
and petticoats.

Their
expressions as she slammed the door made Harric laugh.

Caris set her
back to the door as curses rained against it. She glanced Harric’s direction to
be sure he’d seen the action. A rare smile parted her lips, making her quite
pretty in spite of her size.

Another throb
of loss in his gut. He hadn’t had enough time with her. “Thanks, Caris. You’ve
been a good friend—”

“See you in
the morning.” She slid down the door till she sat, knees to chest. Refusing to
meet his gaze, she clapped her hands to her ears.

“Gods leave
me, you can be stubborn,” he said. She gave no sign of hearing, and he wondered for the hundredth time
how she came to be horse-touched. Whether a careless maid had used mare’s milk
for her mother’s tea, whether she’d been conceived in a saddle, or a dozen
other explanations he’d heard, of which none might be right. The only thing
anyone knew for certain about it was what could be seen: the massive body, the
uncanny sympathy with horses, and the crippling incomprehension of people.

“Farewell,
Caris.”

No
acknowledgement.

He turned up
the stairs before his grief boiled over.

#

In the silence of his chambers, four floors above the bar, Harric
inked a quill and laid it to paper.

To the lady Caris, I leave all
the silver in my strongbox. May it help her find a knight brave enough to make
her his squire.

To Mother Ganner, I leave my
collection of painted playing cards, with all but the Jack of Souls, which I want buried with me, and the
Maid of Blades, which I leave to Caris,
for luck.

He leaned
back in the chair to read what he’d written, and frowned. The style was too
informal. He’d learned to forge wills as part of his mother’s teaching, and
they had always been ceremonial in their language, but somehow he hadn’t
thought his own will would need it, or that he’d ever value such ceremony. He
set the sheet aside, bemused.

On his last
sheet of paper he began anew.

I, Harric Dimoore, being of sound mind and
body, do hereby bequeath unto the following people, the worldly possessions
here named.

That was
better. He formalized the rest. Then he added, Item: One longsword, barely used, for Mother Ganner’s mantel, and
chewed the end of the quill while he studied the words. Should he add, with my love, or for being my mother when my real one was mad? Of course. He wrote
it all and swallowed an unexpected knot in his throat.

“Damn you, Mags,” he hissed, rubbing a sting
from his eyes. He'd already said his farewells and had his tears, and now
writing the will dragged him through it again.

To Rudy, the stable master, he wrote, my chamber pot, with contents.

Harric
chuckled, then wept.

And damn Mags
for watering the wine. He’d drunk enough to lay him out, but it merely filled
his bladder.

He hastily
wrote off the rest, adding, To Caris: My
unrequited heart—if only it had longer to convince you to open yours. That
made him laugh again. A flirtation from beyond the grave. She'd find that
perfectly in character.

Signing it
for Mother Ganner as witness—as he signed for all her dealings—he set it aside.

As the
sealing wax cooled on the will, he noticed the air had grown hot in his
chambers. Outside, the usually ceaseless river winds had died. He tore off his
shirt and dropped it to the floor, then crossed the room and threw open the
wind shutters.

Silver
moonlight of the Bright Mother bathed him, and he stood at the sill to let the
summer air caress his skin. She watched him from across the scablands, her face
full and serene as if all were well in the world. Below his window, the dark
void of the river canyon sighed. He nudged a candle stub off the sill and
watched it fall past five stories of inn and fifteen fathoms of cliff face
toward the swirling waters. Since they’d built the inn upon the very edge of
the cliff, and since the top floors jettied even farther over the river, the
candle hit the surface well away from the foot of the cliff to vanish without a
sound in the black waters.

The view of
the broken hills across the river, which normally cheered him, only made him
wistful. This was his last look. After tonight, would he ever know beauty
again? Would he know anything? As the Bright Mother moon set into the scablands
of the opposite shore, her low-angled light etched the rocks in stark relief, a
jagged labyrinth of stone. He had always meant to explore those lands, but
never had. In patches of darkness between its crags he spotted the campfires of
emigrants bound for the Free Lands, another place he’d never see.

As the Bright
Mother sank below the horizon, he imagined he felt her protective powers
withdraw, even as the Mad Moon, which he knew rose somewhere in the east,
marshaled threat and destruction.

He snorted.
“Such symbolic timing, Mother.”

Laughter
gusted from the windows of the bar far below. His guests were probably betting
on the manner of his doom again. He’d started the wagers himself, to keep
things light at supper. “Hanging” had been a popular one, along with “tooken by
a god,” though his personal favorite was “loved to death by hoors.” They all
knew it was a pointless pastime, since all victims of his mother’s curses died
under cover of fog. The last two victims had been Harric’s friends, Chacks and
Remo. The day before their appointed dooms, they’d fled for the Free Lands, and
the fog overtook them. Emigrants had found their bodies on the north road,
without a mark on them to show how they’d died.

Harric
slammed the shutters on the view, biting back a string of curses against his
mother.

The room
spun. His head felt heavy. Maybe the apple wine was finally doing its work. He
tore off the remainder of his clothes and flopped on his bed to lie sweating in
the stagnant air. If sleep would come, he’d have it; no sense watching all
night for his doom. Without sleep he’d be dull and vulnerable the rest of the
day, unfit for resistance.

He pulled his
sword from under his bed and lay with it clasped to his breast in its scabbard.
Small help, perhaps, when fighting a mystery, but its weight and edge gave
comfort.

He closed his
eyes, resolved at least to rest, and fell into a wine-soaked sleep, his last in
Gallows Ferry.